Beryl Bainbridge buried in Highgate cemetery

Eclectic crowd of friends celebrates the life and work of a 'superb granny' with a 'truly Dickensian gift' writes Maev Kennedy.

Beryl Bainbridge, rarely perceived as cuddly even by those who relished her work and eccentric personality, was today celebrated as "a superb granny", before being buried in suitably grand literary surroundings at Highgate Cemetery, where her neighbours include George Eliot, Karl Marx, the parents of Charles Dickens, and the poet Christina Rossetti.

Death cast a heavy shadow over much of her work, including Master Georgie, about the Crimea, Every Man for Himself about the Titanic disaster, and The Birthday Boys, about Captain Scott's fatal attempt to conquer the South Pole. In a BBC Radio 3 essay, rebroadcast to mark her death from cancer on 2 July, aged 77, she said: "To give value to existence, death must be regarded as an art."

Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/12/beryl-bainbridge-buried-highgate-cemetery